The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [155]
“Oh, sorry. Anyway, I think the whole thing absolutely first-class.”
“Do you, Mercer. I’m greatly encouraged.”
“You know you’re a frightfully difficult man. I don’t know why I like you.”
“I know why I like you. Because you are so extremely easy.”
“Coming to the library?”
“I suppose so.”
When the library was open a prefect sat there entering in a ledger the books which boys took out. Charles as usual made his way to the case where the Art books were kept but before he had time to settle down, as he liked to do, he was accosted by Curtis-Dunne, the old new boy of last term in Brent’s. “Don’t you think it scandalous,” he said, “that on one of the few days of the week when we have the chance to use the library, we should have to kick our heels waiting until some semi-literate prefect chooses to turn up and take us in? I’ve taken the matter up with the good Frank.”
“Oh, and what did he say to that?”
“We’re trying to work out a scheme by which library privileges can be extended to those who seriously want them, people like you and me and I suppose the good Mercer.”
“I forget for the moment what form you are in.”
“Modern Upper. Please don’t think from that I am a scientist. It’s simply that in the Navy we had to drop Classics. My interests are entirely literary and political. And of course hedonistic.”
“Oh.”
“Hedonistic above all. By the way, I’ve been looking through the political and economic section. It’s very quaintly chosen, with glaring lacunae. I’ve just filled three pages in the Suggestions Book. I thought perhaps you’d care to append your signature.”
“No thanks. It’s not usual for people without library privileges to write in the Suggestions Book. Besides, I’ve no interest in economics.”
“I’ve also written a suggestion about extending the library privileges. Frank needs something to work on, that he can put before the committee.”
He brought the book to the Art bay; Charles read “That since seniority is no indication of literary taste the system of library privileges be revised to provide facilities for those genuinely desirous of using them to advantage.”
“Neatly put, I think,” said Curtis-Dunne.
“You’ll be thought frightfully above yourself, writing this.”
“It is already generally recognized that I am above myself, but I want other signatures.”
Charles hesitated. To gain time he said, “I say, what on earth have you got on your feet? Aren’t those house shoes?”
Curtis-Dunne pointed a toe shod in shabby, soft black leather; a laced shoe without a toecap, in surface like the cover of a well-worn Bible. “Ah, you have observed my labour-saving device. I wear them night and morning. They are a constant perplexity to those in authority. When questioned, as happened two or three times a week during my first term, I say they are a naval pattern which my father, on account of extreme poverty, has asked me to wear out. That embarrasses them. But I am sure you do not share these middle-class prejudices. Dear boy, your name, please, to this subversive manifesto.”
Still Charles hesitated. The suggestion outraged Spierpoint taste in all particulars. Whatever intrigues, blandishments and self-advertisements were employed by the ambitious at Spierpoint were always elaborately disguised. Self-effacement and depreciation were the rule. To put oneself explicitly forward for preferment was literally not done. Moreover, the lead came from a boy who was not only in another house and immeasurably Charles’s inferior, but also a notorious eccentric. A term back Charles would have rejected the proposal with horror, but today and all this term he was aware of a new voice in his inner counsels, a detached, critical Hyde who intruded his presence more and more often on the conventional, intolerant, subhuman, wholly respectable Dr. Jekyll; a voice, as it were, from a more civilized age, as from the chimney corner in mid-Victorian times there used to break sometimes the sardonic laughter of grandmama, relic of Regency, a clear, outrageous, entirely self-assured disturber among the high and muddled thoughts of her whiskered descendants.